On the other hand, if AI accuracy limitations drive the labor demand even further towards expertise, and if making tasks higher-level raises the communication requirements rather than somehow reducing them, the preference for having a few people work 80-hour weeks while twice as many people remain unemployed will become even stronger.
Efficiency improvements tend not to create more leisure time because the gains all go to the people at the top.
Just like they have for 40 years.
Taking that at face value, what happened before 40 years ago? There was unimaginable growth in per-person GDP, so people could have plausibly kicked back and relaxed rather than toiling in factories.
Credit system didn’t exist, which conveniently grandfathered in all the Bloomberg, Trump, and other old money …obviously inheritance made them geniuses who deserved it
Basically Boomers came of age 40 years ago and needed something to do. So the 80-90 year olds of the day handed them all the power.
I mean come on. Do we really need to circumlocute the cause? Why the old rich people writing the rules and always winning is suspicious af still?
The average person worked fewer hours through almost all of recorded history until the last few decades.
They did not have vague “line go up” motives. They worked to stabilize biological necessity.
Workers today work more because of a large investor class that doesn’t. We’re working for two or more shareholders not our own roof and food.
If you're claiming that people worked fewer hours during the industrial revolution than today, I'll need a citation for that. If you're referencing the claims made by "Original affluent society", that has problems around how working hours are counted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Crit...
So modern anecdotes make the most sense. I grew up in 80s dairyland. None of the farmers worked a 9-5 but they rarely worked 40+ too.
We worked much much less in rural-landia before the last few decades gave rise to "service and knowledge" work with no concrete goal but "make line go up".
Knowledge work comes along with zero concrete termination points. Programmers grinding code 80+ hours are not stopping to see if it's useful or just repetition.
Sure from a physics perspective they're doing "work". From a lived experience, to real needs of biology, economy perspective they're just sitting at a computer juicing their hormones, while exploiting farmers labor, who now works more hours as more knowledge workers contribute less real outputs essential to biology. Same with why carpentry and other trades services are so expensive; supply and demand. Millennials wanted 24/7 office jobs.
While I grew up in farmland I later went into EE, and have a good sense for who is moving the ball. It isn't software people. Their biology is addicted to a stupid loop of zero real productivity. Playing abstract snake games in one's head, to count initialized memory registers and recording their data is some basic bitch work marketed to the point of fostering delusion it's cutting in 2010-2020 to use 1960s style syntaxes to manage machines.
If you're asking "why didn't the people before then work less?" the answer is "because productivity gains hadn't yet made that possible".
Just to expand on that a bit, in case it isn't fully clear:
There is a level of productivity per worker required to support everyone in the society. This level fluctuates some with the overall standard of living, but does not vary with total productivity, population, or GDP. Let's call this level P, for Parity. (And let's assume it's not "just barely enough to support everyone", but "enough to support them comfortably and reliably, with a decent buffer".)
Once the level of productivity per worker passes certain thresholds—multiples of P—the total amount of work required to maintain the society at the same level drops. More work produces surplus. That surplus can be then used in a variety of ways. One of those ways is by reducing the amount of work being done. So, for instance, if the productivity level reaches 2P, then every worker can work half the amount of time they were working before, and still be producing enough to fully provide for everyone. If it reaches 3P, then every worker can work 1/3 the amount of time, and so on.
If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.
I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. I'd say that at this point, just as a rough estimate, we're probably somewhere between 1.5P and 2P, but that's not really my field of expertise. But because the wealthy have captured approximately all productivity gains above the level we were at in 1980, they have seen their wealth massively increase, while the rest of us have just been scraping by.
>[...] I don't know exactly when real-world productivity got enough higher than P that we could realistically start reducing worked hours, but it definitely did so at some point in the last several decades. [...]
GDP per capita has been growing exponentially for centuries[1]. Is there some arbitrary GDP per capita level where people should be expected to kick back and relax? Why makes your arbitrary line more or less correct than someone else's arbitrary line? Moreover people's revealed preferences show that for most people, that line hasn't been reached yet. Why should people's revealed preferences be overridden by whatever number you came up with?
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-p...
>If, instead, the surplus is captured by the wealthy, the workers don't see benefit, and inequality grows.
Economic statistics shows it hasn't been captured. Even if you're some sort of marxist that thinks labor's share of GDP should be 100%, at the very most this means the point at which everyone can kick back and relax is delayed by 40%.
Your citation
* Doesn't show how labor compensation is distributed among workers (CEO pay vs. median wages).
* Doesn't account for how capital returns are distributed among different wealth levels.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/19...
Like I said: there is a threshold of Stuff Created Per Person above which providing a comfortable life for every person is purely a distribution problem. For most of human history, we have not been above that threshold.
"Subsistence farming", for instance, is effectively defined by only being able to meet the much lower threshold of "enough that people can survive".
A post-scarcity society is, broadly speaking, defined by being able to produce enough for everyone to thrive with minimal work from anyone.
We are somewhere between the two, but we are reaching the point where we're closer to the latter than the former. Technological advancements have, for some time, ensured that we have enough food for everyone on earth (again, there's still a distribution problem; that part is nearly 100% about politics, not about scarcity). If the very wealthy had not captured all the productivity increases since 1980, I don't know what else we could have achieved, but it wouldn't have been small.
> Economic statistics shows it hasn't been captured.
Look at any graph of income growth by quintile that goes back to the middle of the 20th century or earlier, and you'll see it starts with some roughly parallel lines, and then one line that keeps going up at about the same slope, while the rest stay nearly flat.
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep...
For efficiency improvements to create more leisure time or even let the bottom 50% retire early, society would need to be radically restructured so that its locus of control is not capital. This would probably only happen with violence.
This might happen one day, but for now, efficiency improvements get capitalized into the ponzi-esque stock market while the efficiency gains which could be realized at the bottom of the pyramid get "burned off" via inflation targeting of 2%. A quirky side effect of this is that the vast efficiency improvements we have seen have not even been allowed to prevent a pensions crisis.
The Economist, serving in its capacity as a dutiful servant to neoliberal capital, frets equally about AI inevitably causing us to "run out of jobs" as it does a demographic crisis inevitably causing us to "run out of workers" (https://archive.ph/6hgYq).
And even then, even a small percentage of bad actors who are selfish would likely restructure it back due to technology enabling them to do so! The fact is, the elite at the top is a steady state that is hard to leave if you worship efficiency. Only the Amish and some native tribes have realized that the only way out is not to play.
So society has to depend on something fully independent of any specific person or group and that cannot be changed without leaving behind a long papertrail.
In other words nobody dreams of becoming a banker/accountant/auditor/etc. at 5 year old. Probably even double entry bookkeeping would be superfluous if everyone were virtuous paragons.
True, but it's also mainly because we have a society that is based on technological innovation with rapid transportation/communication. I was only responding to the other reply that seemed to imply that there was an alternative restructuring that puts less capital at the top.
Not really. It became that way because wealth begets power.
The narrative it tells us is that we should be terrified to change this because nobody else except the owners of capital can be trusted as stewards of our economy and political system (particularly not "government").
Ours is a joke compared to theirs and we started off richer. The primary difference is that their government allocates capital.
Wasteful, indeed.
That's a seductive narrative, but not backed up by data. The share of GDP that goes to labor is has held relatively stable in the past few decades. It has admittedly fallen, but it's on the order of a few percentage points, whereas the GDP per capita more than tripled.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG
>while the efficiency gains which could be realized at the bottom of the pyramid get "burned off" via inflation targeting of 2%.
But inflation-adjusted wages isn't negative or even flat, it has grown?
Famously, one can spin statistics any way they wish. Prove to us this isn’t the case here.
Both can be true if the distribution has changed, which seems to be the case:
"Over the last four decades, the income gap between more- and less-educated workers has grown significantly; the study finds that automation accounts for more than half of that increase."
https://news.mit.edu/2022/automation-drives-income-inequalit...
Additionally, necessities like food and fuel seem to have jumped in price, outpacing wage growth over the past few years, while other important goods and services (housing, health care, higher education) have outpaced inflation for decades.
If you click that "max" button on your graph it does not show a stable share.
Appeal to status quo is seductive for those who are generally comfortable though, I get it.
>But inflation-adjusted wages isn't negative or even flat, it has grown?
Looks pretty flat to me:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/185369/median-hourly-ear...
If they weighted nondiscretionary housing, education and healthcare in the inflation basket properly and de-emphasized discretionary electronics and clothes I doubt it would even be flat.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14908283/hardest-wo...
The moment your economy is productive enough that it is not necessary to hire every single person, employers start firing people rather than cut the working hours evenly across the population, because each employee represents a fixed cost. Hence you either work full time or you don't work at all.
Which is the scary part of the AI revolution. Devaluing labor always leads to increased inequality in the short-to-mid term until a new equilibrium is met. But what if we have machines that can do most jobs for 10-20k a year? Suddenly we have a hard ceiling for everyone below a certain "skill level", where skill includes things like owning capital, going to the right college, and having the right parents.
In the past, when inequality became too extreme, (the threat of) violent uprisings usually led to reform, but with autonomous weapon systems, drones and droids, manpower becomes less of a concern. The result might be a permanent underclass.
Also I don't understand the entire argument. The thread is about stopping economic growth. You say you don't receive enough of the current economic growth ... so you want growth to reduce? That will make your life a lot worse, won't it? At 0 growth the only way to give you anything would be to take it away from someone else. In other words: you want an extra meal at 0% growth? That can only happen if someone else doesn't get one ...
Personally, I don't want growth to reduce, exactly. I'd prefer it if there were tighter restrictions on the direction of growth, and we spent more time finding creative ways to return to smaller communities where the efforts are spent less on pure money and more on people helping each other. And more time restoring nature. So growth, but not purely in an economic sense.
It only seems like a degrowth thing when you look at from a purely fiscal angle.
Hell, I know people who've done this. Several actually. Well, only one that's still alive (they retired there, wanted to grow old and die there ... and did), but still.
But ... why bother anyone about it? You want others to do this but would never accept doing so yourself?
Well, first I already have, so I don't know where you got "never accept doing so yourself", which is something you made up. Secondly, why bother: because the current world system is destroying nature, which in my opinion is on the same level as actively targeting people. So I do want that to stop.
If nature was not being destroyed and it was just people messing up their own little world, then that would be different.
Is it? If you put it this dramatically, it's bullshit. Nature will survive us, rather than the other way around, guaranteed. MAYBE we can kill large animals if we tried, but probably not even that (they'd just shrink and then grow large again, wouldn't be the first, or second, or even the tenth time that happened).
Life on earth is being sustained by the sun and by nuclear reactions inside the earth. Nothing we do makes the tiniest of difference in the long run.
Increased temperature and increased CO2 and climate change essentially make more chemical and solar energy available in the environment. Life is chemical in nature and is limited by available energy. That means there would be more life, more green, if more energy was available. Life would have to be pretty damn badly designed if this damaged it, rather than what we actually see happening: life is spreading to much more of the planet than even 100 years ago.
So, first, you can rest assured: it is just people messing up their own little world.
Second: it would be seriously unnatural if we stopped. After all competing and using up all available resources is literally the sole goal of all life on earth. And if you compare humans to an average ocean-bound bacterial species, we're not even particularly good at it.
But YMMV I guess.
For me personally, lack of money early in my career caused me _far_ greater daily stress than bureaucracy at work. Not needing to budget daily purchases? now that’s low stress.
We throw away 1/3 of the food that we make. We're overweight and waste energy from carrying that excess weight.
We're less physically active as a result so we require motorized transport that is predominantly single passenger cars so we build all our infrastructure around cars which in turn causes us to be even more inactive and unhealthy.
This also leads to higher medical costs, lower productivity, and less satisfaction in life.
So maybe efficiency should be a priority. What do you think?
It's a wicked problem with no obvious solution.
In other advanced societies (say New York City), people catch public transport to go to work. Catching public transport usually involves a certain amount on walking, since the bus/metro stop is not usually outside your front door.
But it's efficient in terms of working as a slave for the technological system, though. It means less time spent on life, more time spent on thinking about technology.
> We're less physically active as a result so we require motorized transport that is predominantly single passenger cars which in turn causes us to be even more inactive and unhealthy.
Again, quite efficient for the system.
>We throw away 1/3 of the food that we make. We're overweight and waste energy from carrying that excess weight.
Throwing away food can be efficient. In fact, absent evidence to the contrary, we should expect that throwing away food (or buying/producing more) is the more efficient option out there, given that people aren't putting effort into conserving food. Remember, conservation isn't free. For instance it might be possible to reduce the amount of fruits that are bruised and thrown away, but that requires more packaging and more careful handling, which isn't free. At the household level, proper meal planning and inventory management can probably eliminate all food waste, but nobody wants to spend the mental effort into managing an ERP for their kitchen.
>We're less physically active as a result so we require motorized transport that is predominantly single passenger cars so we build all our infrastructure around cars which in turn causes us to be even more inactive and unhealthy.
You got cause and effect mixed up. People live in suburbs and drive around everywhere because they like the suburban lifestyle (eg. cheaper/bigger houses, "safer" and "quieter" neighborhoods), not because they're not too fat to live in 15 minute cities. Remember, suburbanization happened well before the obesity epidemic.
Until this ^ there are no guarantees in life.
You cant eat money
If you want to put it that way.
But given we agree it is absolutely useless, you should probably periodically trade some of it for food. Etc.
That works out really well, since money doesn’t mold as quickly as food, and doesn’t require refrigeration. So accumulate money, let it work for you in the form of productive capital, but skim it for food purchases.
This industry is so wasteful that I'm convinced productivity only matters when looking to fire someone. Otherwise, Animal Farm.
Looking at the technological advancement from a human utility perspective... opting out as circumstance allows seems reasonable.
I still live like it's 2004. Computer room and everything. What's an AdTech? /s
Of course, not all innovation is bad. Banning smoking in restaurants does not require technology to restrict it...
Alright then, if that's really the foregone conclusion, then what's the point of existence? Should we not try and make things better by any means necessary?
> Alright then, if that's really the foregone conclusion, then what's the point of existence? Should we not try and make things better by any means necessary?
That's the pertinent question, and I don't have an answer that can adjudicate the dispute, but I can humbly help you formulate the choice as one between Leviathan or oblivion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ophuls#Leviathan_or_ob...
> In his contribution, "Leviathan or Oblivion?", Ophuls wrote on the political and economical implications of environmental problems. His main argument was that "because of the tragedy of the commons, environmental problems cannot be solved through cooperation...and the rationale for government with major coercive powers is overwhelming." According to Ophuls "reforming a corrupt people is a Herculean task," which only leaves us with the choice of becoming a leviathan or oblivion.
> Eckersley (1992) argued that, "...although Ophuls has since moderated his position by placing a greater emphasis on the need for self restraint than on the need for external coercion, he continues to maintain that the latter must be resorted to if calls for the former are unsuccessful."
The sobering realization that others smarter and earlier than I am have seen this change coming over the horizon and have warned us heedlessly leads me to believe that we must be the change we wish to see, and that change must happen socially, culturally, and politically.
Ours must be a human revolution toward society, not withdrawing from it. We must encourage and embrace the humanity in ourselves and in each other, and seek to lift others up more than we seek to tear others down. Hate can't drive out hate; only love can do that. We must love each other more than we hate each other. Love will guide us to our salvation.
Late-stage capitalism is enabled by the 4+ decades of the very wealthy taking all the gains from increased efficiency, which gives them the power to turn it into a feedback loop.
Our current situation is not an inevitable and natural outgrowth of the improved productivity of the late 20th century: it is specifically caused by policy changes (starting) under Reagan that allowed for more consolidation, less care for the common good, and more focus on personal self-aggrandizement.